Bringing the Members Back in? Democratizing Candidate Selection

Primary elections and membership ballots are becoming more common as a means of selecting candidates in European parties. This article assesses the likely implications of these changes for party cohesion by examining the American experience of primaries and contrasting US candidate selection with the membership ballots and primaries recently adopted by parties in the UK and Spain. It is argued that, in the absence of state regulation of candidate selection in European parties, these changes are unlikely to undermine party organizations as primaries have in the US. Instead, the European experience suggests that party leaders have been able to retain ultimate control over candidate selection, and that the democratization of the process has been more formal than real. KEY WORDS _ candidates _ cohesion _ membership _ primaries _ selection Candidate selection in West European parties has traditionally been the pre-serve of small numbers of party officials operating in less than transparent conditions, leading Gallagher and Marsh to describe it as the 'secret garden ' of politics in their 1988 study. However, a decade later, forms of candidate selection involving membership ballots of various kinds are becoming an increasingly visible feature of West European party politics, with major parties in a number of countries, including Spain and the UK, including members in the party 'selectorates ' which elect candidates for public offices. This article assesses the causes and consequences of parties extending membership participation in candidate selection, and examines the emerging empirical reality in two cases where parties have made such changes